Roger Allam Anchors a Riotous, Unsentimental Ayckbourn Revival at the Old Vic

John Martin

September 6, 2026
5 min read

Roger Allam Anchors a Riotous, Unsentimental Ayckbourn Revival at the Old Vic

How the Other Half Loves | Old Vic Theatre until 19th September 2026

Two dinner parties, one set, endless laughs: Ayckbourn at his sharpest

Classic comedy returns to the in-the-round staging it was always meant for.

How the Other Half Loves, dating back to 1969, stands as one of Alan Ayckbourn’s earliest hits and the play that truly established his reputation. While he has since penned over eighty plays, this was the work where he first began to experiment with the fundamental theatrical elements of space and time.

He had previously realized the necessity of mastering well-constructed playwriting before deconstructing it, a realization embodied in his play, Relatively Speaking. Like much of Ayckbourn’s oeuvre, it premiered in the round at his own theatre in Scarborough, only later being staged in proscenium houses. This revival, directed by Phillip Breen and featuring Roger Allam and Dorothy Atkinson, restores How the Other Half Loves to its original in-the-round staging and is part of Matthew Warchus’s final season as Artistic Director of the Old Vic.

The play centres on two couples, with a third unwittingly drawn into their orbit. An affair between a member of each main couple sets the stage for the morning after, as chaos erupts through revelations, illicit assignations, and a cascade of construals and misconstruals.

Further complicating matters, the evening’s centrepiece is a dinner party, or rather, two. The guilty couple each independently use the innocent Featherstones as an alibi, inviting them to dinner at their respective homes on consecutive evenings. Ayckbourn ingeniously stages both dinner parties simultaneously on the same set, with the hapless guests swivelling in their chairs between the two. The effect is both clever and highly amusing.

Ayckbourn has, like Noël Coward and Terence Rattigan before him, suffered the fate of being dismissed for years as a purveyor of tedious, comfortable, middle-class theatre. However, he has since been rediscovered as an artist with far more depth. He is now almost lauded as the English Chekhov, a comparison that becomes evident upon closer inspection: beneath the farce and the meticulously crafted confusion lies a profound undertow of sadness and reality.

This production bravely slows down and lingers in these moments. It refrains from attempting to modernize the play, remaining firmly rooted in its period, complete with trim phones and outdated attitudes towards women. The production does not soften these elements; if anything, it emphasizes them. Yet, it remains remarkably funny.

It is also worth discussing the Old Vic itself, which has undergone a significant reconfiguration for this production. The audience now sits in the round, on all sides of the stage. As the Old Vic is typically a proscenium house, a circle has been constructed, and seats have been placed on the stage itself. This arrangement worked more effectively for me than it did when I previously saw Arcadia there.

This is perhaps unsurprising, given that How the Other Half Loves, like most of Ayckbourn’s work, was originally written for in-the-round staging at Scarborough. This setup also benefits the production, offering no hiding places for the actors and allowing the audience to view the action from every angle, presenting a genuine challenge for both director and cast, which they meet superbly.

Roger Allam is one of my favourite actors, and his dry delivery can wring laughs out of the most innocuous lines. He is ably partnered by Dorothy Atkinson as his unfaithful wife, Fiona Foster. Ayesha Antoine and Rowan Polonski play Teresa and Bob Phillips, and it is with Bob that Fiona Foster is having an affair. They both portray a realistic picture of a family of the time, with Teresa coping with a newborn baby who has some quite destructive tendencies. The sextet is completed by Laura Ellsworthy and Adam Gillen as Mary and William Featherstone. They managed to keep their performances just on the right side of caricature, and Gillen, in particular, I found uncannily reminiscent of my Uncle Wally!

They all display both verbal and physical agility and form a first-rate cast for a play that, in lesser hands, might fail to ignite with such comic delight while also maintaining its serious undertones.

How the Other Half Loves is Ayckbourn at his most ingenious, a farce so beautifully constructed that its cleverness never gets in the way of the laughs, with a real sting of truth underneath it. Returned to the in-the-round staging it was always meant for, it’s a genuine treat.

Book now if you want to see Ayckbourn’s cleverness and cruelty run at full tilt. EyeOnLondon rarely sees a farce this well-drilled hold onto its sadness so completely.

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[Image Credit | Manuel Harlan]

Old Vic Theatre · London